Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) organized the 10th FICCI Higher Education Summit 2014, a two day Global Conference, on November 13 & 14 at FICCI, Federation House, New Delhi. This year the theme of the Conference focused on internationalization of higher education and implementation framework for Vision 2030 for higher education in India released by FICCI during the 9th FICCI Higher Education Summit last year. Project E-QUAL achieved high visibility at the FICCI Higher Education Summit through different forms of participation. British Council India, lead partner of the E-QUAL Project, was a sponsor and a knowledge partner for the FICCI HE Summit. British Council actively participated in the summit and was instrumental In organising speakers and distinguished delegates from the United Kingdom. Project E-QUAL contributed to the summit in the following strands:

One of the courses that is being prepared for the Critical Thinking area by Professor Anannya Dasgupta of Shiv Nadar University was selected for a poster presentation at the FICCI Higher Education Summit pre conference session on 12 November 2014. The poster was displayed prominently during at the venue of the conference, 3rd Floor, FICCI, Federation House. The poster won accolades from the jury, delegates and distinguished participants of the summit. It won the prize for the second best paper of the summit. We are happy to share that the poster will be uploaded very soon to our project website and the official facebook page, with the kind permission from Professor Dasgupta. Our congratulations to Team Shiv Nadar!

On the first day of the academic summit, Professor Nikhil Sinha, Vice-Chancellor, Shiv Nadar University presented the project in his speech. The theme of his session was “Higher Education Vision 2030”. The road-map to achieve an aspirational, transformative and innovative ‘Vision 2030' for Indian Higher Education (created by the FICCI Higher Education Committee) is aligned with the policy foundation and envisages the ‘student’ at the core of a rapidly globalising world. It promotes the theory of life-long learning beyond campuses, together with integration of technology in every aspect of learning-teaching and institutional administration to deliver high quality education. Professor Sinha’s eloquent speech envisaged the strategies of making India a global hub in Higher Education by encouraging participatory leadership, creating world class campuses and inspiring our higher educational institutions to aim for better global rankings. This would entail liberalizing policies, providing autonomy, promoting transparency with a focus on outcomes rather than merely on inputs.This session was built into the context of sketching a broad framework for implementation of Vision 2030 – thus Professor Sinha’s speech and presentation of the project was very much successful in setting the stage for the ensuing discussions at the Conference.

Professor Supriya Chaudhuri, Faculty Co-ordinator, Project E-QUAL, Jadavpur University presented the project with great eloquence and clarity in her short but effective speech on the second day of the conference ( 14 November 2014) in a session themed around the area of “Curriculum and Instructional Strategies”. This session was moderated by Professor Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Vice-Chancellor, Ashoka University and was chaired by Professor Baroness Tessa Blackstone, Former Vice-Chancellor of University of Greenwich and Advisory Board Member, Apeejay Stya University. The present era dominated by fast paced technological changes and multi-disciplinary approach demands a relook at the curriculum making it more relevant and contemporaneous. Focusing on programme architecture and promoting new pedagogical techniques like blended learning, flipped classrooms, and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) could help in developing solutions to this complex problem. Professor Chaudhuri’s presentation was structured around this theme and it relooked at some of the key interventions required to deliver quality education in multiple ways with special emphasis given on Projet E-QUAL.